wifi settings?

well at work i can get my laptop to connect to the network but i cant get my phone to. the other day i was able to enter in all the ip address's and get my phone to connect. now it won't connect again. my laptop still will though. anyone have any suggestions? this is a 3gs with 4.2.1 and i cant just ask the IT guy. He doesn't even want any of our plant maintenance laptops on the network let alone my iphone.

edit:forgot to put that it shows the wifi bars but just wont do anything.

Maybe their is a MAC filter set on the wifi? Just a guess. But if that's the case the IT guy would have to give permission to each device before it connects. Not very many places do this though so it's not too likely.

the other day i was able to enter in all the ip address's and get my phone to connect. it shows the wifi bars but just wont do anything.

Originally Posted by RedChirp

So you're connected to the wifi network, but can't access the internet? As if the device wasn't assigned an IP address or something?

Actually something that makes more sense based on these two things. You said that you entered in the IP address yourself before rather than letting the network assign the IP. What could have happened was, lets just say for example you assigned 192.168.1.20 as the IP on your iPhone, Once your iPhone disconnects from the network that IP address is now available to be assigned to another computer. What's probably happening is that your iPhone is set to use the static IP address of 192.168.1.20 (That you set earlier) even though another device on the network was already given this IP address once you disconnected and is probably still using it. Try changing your iPhones IP address or just let the network assign you an IP address of it's choosing.
You might want to completely delete the network and it's settings from your iPhones memory and start fresh.

Actually something that makes more sense based on these two things. You said that you entered in the IP address yourself before rather than letting the network assign the IP. What could have happened was, lets just say for example you assigned 192.168.1.20 as the IP on your iPhone, Once your iPhone disconnects from the network that IP address is now available to be assigned to another computer. What's probably happening is that your iPhone is set to use the static IP address of 192.168.1.20 (That you set earlier) even though another device on the network was already given this IP address once you disconnected and is probably still using it. Try changing your iPhones IP address or just let the network assign you an IP address of it's choosing.
You might want to completely delete the network and it's settings from your iPhones memory and start fresh.

that might be. i got all the ip address's from my laptop one night when it was connected. when i entered in the ip's by hand it worked for a few nights. well one day the network went down and now i cant get on it anymore. ill try changing the ip number some and see what that does. should i be using dhcp, bootp, or static to enter them manually. i could have sworn that i entered them under bootp before but it wont let me now.

that might be. i got all the ip address's from my laptop one night when it was connected. when i entered in the ip's by hand it worked for a few nights. well one day the network went down and now i cant get on it anymore. ill try changing the ip number some and see what that does. should i be using dhcp, bootp, or static to enter them manually. i could have sworn that i entered them under bootp before but it wont let me now.

The best option would be to use DHCP and let the network assign you an IP rather than setting it yourself.

well i ended up using static and played around with the ip address. i moved it up by 1 and got it to work. thanks for the help.

That's great. But just as a warning, you are likely to run into this same problem again in the future if you keep doing it this way. The second you disconnect from the network that IP is going to be made available for others to use again. The ideal way would be to use DHCP so that every time you try to connect, the network assigns you an available IP address that is guaranteed to be available.

Really the only time you would want to use a static IP like you are doing, is if you are the network administrator. That way you can be sure that nothing else attempts to use the IP address in question.

with dhcp i wasnt getting an ip assigned to me for whatever reason. is this something he can setup to block phones from the network? like i said my laptop works fine.

It is possible, although i you got it to work by assigning your own IP then it's not very likely. As I said earlier it may work if you completely delete all memory of the network from your phone and start over.